2020/8/3
The Lie of 1 Millisievert Per Year Still Prevails — And a Parade of Anti-Nuclear Millionaires Have Emerged Clinging to That Lie
—from Masayuki Takayama’s acclaimed Henken Jizai column, published in the June 7, 2019 issue of Shukan Shincho
This is a magnificent piece that proves he is truly the one and only journalist of his kind in the postwar world.
It is a masterpiece overflowing with truths that all Japanese citizens—and people around the globe—should know.
The Malicious Princess Kaguya
When the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI) was established in Tōkai Village, one of the first major changes was in the academic performance of local elementary and middle schools.
They rose to the top within the prefecture.
This was only natural, given that the children of young nuclear physicists were now attending those schools.
But there was another, more troubling change: the spread of leftist ideology.
In the middle of clear blue skies, vast seas, and green pine groves, when you’re dealing with beta decay or Cherenkov radiation, your mind might also start drifting toward Antonio Gramsci or Harahara Dokei (a Japanese anarchist novel).
You start thinking, can we really entrust nuclear energy to people like this?
So a separate organization, the Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corporation (PNC), was formed by poaching more pragmatic personnel.
The PNC was given ample funding.
Reactor performance improved, and even the dream project—the Monju fast-breeder reactor—was set into motion.
With JAERI left to stew in resentment, the PNC flourished.
Then everything turned dark—thanks to the great tsunami and Prime Minister Naoto Kan.
Despite his incompetence, the man was sly and manipulative.
He chose Korean-made solar panels over nuclear power.
Wielding absolute authority, he installed a former JAERI man as the head of the newly formed Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA)—a body he created himself.
Stalin, too, once appointed Jewish guards to oversee German POWs, and had them enforce punishments even more brutal than Auschwitz.
This felt much the same.
The first chairman, Shunichi Tanaka, did exactly as expected: he shut down all nuclear plants immediately.
He demanded proof that the geological strata beneath the reactors hadn’t moved in 300,000 years—only then would he consider restarting them.
A demand harsher than any set by Princess Kaguya.
As a result, most nuclear plants still have no prospect of restarting.
Yet for all his malevolence, Tanaka still had some grasp of reason.
When the Sendai Nuclear Power Plant was finally restarted, Asahi Shimbun ran a headline saying, “Radiation monitors around the site aren’t functioning. In an accident, residents wouldn’t know where to evacuate.”
They even quoted an NRA official as saying, “Restarting the plant was premature,” and in the next day’s editorial, dismissed it as “grossly irresponsible.”
But the radiation monitors were functioning normally.
And that “quote” from the official? Completely fabricated.
Surely, anyone reading this would be astounded.
I remember saying to a friend next to me, “Just how rotten has Asahi become?”
Tanaka responded harshly, “Stoking public fear with lies—this is practically criminal.”
And yet Asahi offered no correction, no apology.
They merely sneered, “If it’s anti-nuclear, anything goes.”
They raised a fuss again when Takahama Nuclear Plant was approved for restart.
“What if North Korea launches a missile?” they asked.
Tanaka replied, “If they’re going to attack, they’d be better off hitting the center of Tokyo. That would be far more effective than targeting a small nuclear plant.”
And once that missile is launched, North Korea would cease to exist.
Why would they aim at a remote, sparsely populated coastal facility?
Tanaka, in his own way, worked to reassure the public—and called out foolish media.
But his successor, Toyoshi Fuketa, lacked even that basic common sense.
He acted purely out of vengeance.
He was the one who first decided to decommission Monju.
It wasn’t a school experiment—just a sodium leak—and yet he shut down a trillion-yen project over that.
Apparently, to him, nuclear reactors resemble the robes of “monks from the PNC.”
He then pushed restart requirements to absurd extremes.
For instance, while scientific data shows tsunami heights on the Sea of Japan side max out at 5 meters, he demanded preparations for more than double that.
And if an earthquake hits? Liquefaction might occur.
So he ordered, “Assume unprecedented liquefaction. Drive thousands of steel piles 50 meters underground.”
He demanded counter-terrorism measures too.
In the U.S., they ran scenarios where a Phantom jet crashes into a reactor building, causing fires.
So they made it mandatory for every plant to have backup power and cooling pools.
Taking inspiration from that, Fuketa decreed: “Assume a terrorist attack where four jumbo jets crash into the plant.”
To meet that requirement, each plant now needs a 50-meter-deep underground pool capable of floating a 50,000-ton warship like the Yamato.
Right now, nuclear plants across Japan are desperately digging those pools.
Separately, he also issued a deadline-bound directive requiring backup power supplies and control rooms to be built deep underground.
Fail to complete it in time, and don’t expect approval.
Thus, massive construction projects—surpassing even the old wartime underground headquarters in Matsushiro—are quietly underway at nuclear facilities nationwide.
The cost? Hundreds of billions of yen.
Yet fundamental questions remain.
The threat is from Al-Qaeda or North Korea.
So why must individual nuclear plants bear the burden of defense?
If there are legitimate concerns, it should be the government that ensures national security—not the regulatory authority.
Meanwhile, the myth of the “1 millisievert per year” radiation limit is still allowed to stand.
And riding on that lie, a whole class of anti-nuclear millionaires has emerged.
It should be the job of the NRA to root out this kind of fraud.
But they do nothing.
Instead, what we’re left with is a spiteful, ugly Kaguya-hime, unfit to behold.
